Browns playoff win: A Belichick memory; a Chudzinski dream

Tuesday

Dec 3, 2013 at 10:17 PM

Rob Chudzinski probably will never achieve what Bill Belichick has achieved since Belichick left Cleveland. He remains determined, however, to do more than Belichick did in Cleveland. Their teams will collide Sunday in New England.

Steve Doerschuk CantonRep.com sports writer @sdoerschukREP

Perhaps Bill Belichick paused early this year to acknowledge the happiest day of Rob Chudzinski's work life.

Normally, Belichick would have been way too absorbed to care. In three days, his Patriots were playing his 25th postseason game as their pilot. He hadn't gotten to 200 NFL victories (hitting the milestone last December) by taking sentimentality breaks.

But this news was different. This was Cleveland.

This was the latest chapter in one of the saddest tales the NFL will ever see. On Mr. Bill's way to Canton as a coach who will attract votes as "the greatest," the sadness began, in certain respects, with him.

On Jan. 7, 2013, Rob Chudzinski was hired with the hope he could become the first Browns head coach to win a playoff game since Belichick.

Of all the Browns head coaches since Marty Schottenheimer, the only ones to arrive with a natural affinity for Cleveland have been Belichick and Chudzinski.

Belichick's dad, Steve, was as big a believer in Paul Brown as there was. During Steve's long coaching career, he would make trips to watch Brown's Cleveland practices.

He was hardly the only one — Vince Lombardi was among the knowledge seekers who made pilgrimages to Ohio to observe the master. We know because Steve Belichick told us.

The elder Belichick was emphatic about this: That shiny championship prize should be the Paul Brown Trophy, not the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Little Bill grew up with that, years before Chudzinski grew up a Browns fan.

Now they are bringing their teams to battle against each other, with Brainiac Bill seeming incapable of losing, and Chud in trouble.

Chudzinski's Browns are in a 1-6 nosedive capped by a loss to the lowly Jaguars. It is hard to tell how many fans blame him, but the number of the suspicious is growing.

Belichick has been there. Twenty years ago, he was deep in the soup.

The Browns had gotten off to a nice start, but there was a quarterback mess, and the 1993 season fell apart. At this time 20 years ago, Belichick's Browns were in the middle of a 1-6 skid.

The last of the losses was in the final home game. Fans were frosted. Belichick wasn't a rookie head coach. He was in his third year of a losing season, which aggravated a following that had seen the Browns in AFC title games in 1986, '87 and '89.

The announced crowd for the '93 home finale — against the Patriots — was 48,218.

Belichick's Browns reached the playoffs in 1994 but were soon back in the depths. His 1995 team was in a 1-3 slump when the news broke: The team was being hijacked to Baltimore.

In Belichick's final dozen games as head coach of the Browns, most in the wake of the bombshell, the team was 2-10.

Chudzinski, 45, is the latest to attempt what neither Belichick nor anyone else has been able to achieve since Schottenheimer in the 1980s: Make the Browns good, and coach them for years.

Chudzinski emerged from the Jacksonville game with a defiance in his voice that said he knows everybody is thinking that this year is as bad as all the rest, but that such is not the case.

He said, with conviction, he will be the one to take it back to before Belichick.

"This is what I came here for," he said. "We have a plan. I believe in that plan, and I'll navigate us through this to the better days that lay ahead for us.

"I'm fully committed and undaunted in doing that."

For now, he is 4-8. Unless it pulls the upset of the year in the NFL, against Belichick, his team will need two wins in its final three games to match Belichick's record, 6-10, in his first year as Browns head coach, 1991.

Belichick's time in New England is a taunting reminder to Browns fans of what other towns have while Cleveland languishes.

Of Belichick's 213 NFL victories, 177 have come with the Patriots since he took them over in 2000.

The post-Belichick Browns trail old Bill by 100. Since coming back in 1999, they have 77 wins.

Of the Browns' 160 expansion-era defeats, Chudzinski is accountable for only eight.

He is 11 months in now, and the happiest day of his work life is a fading memory. The weight of history and a game against Belichick are on his shoulders.

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